10. Rejecting Security Discourse Means Worst-Cases Fill-in, But Specifics Solve Fear

Figure 12: Rejection security fails to tame policy-makers and escalates to worst-cases.

1. Security is best understood through an approach that combines attention to material threats with scrutiny of how those threats are socially constructed, drawing on realism and constructivism to correct each other’s limitations rather than treating either as sufficient on its own. Lott (2004) shows these “critiques do not demonstrate an understanding of the role that material threats play in national security matters or the negative consequences of ignoring those material threats. Their alternative analytic focus often rejects the traditional state 'security dilemma' […] Such an occurrence does not fulfill the requirements of a security framework that seeks theoretical rigor and policy relevance. It is a necessary (but insufficient) component of a more comprehensive understanding of security. The potentially positive political vision that emerges from political constructivism balances the negative vision provided by realism and suggests an opportunity to overcome culturally constructed threats.” This distinction matters because recognizing that political actors construct threats does not mean ignoring them is harmless, as one still needs a plan to overcome others securitizing us as threats. Influential psychologist Pinker (2002) grounds this view in human nature, as “violence is universal across human cultures. […] Even among modern nation-states, raw self-interest is an important motive for war. [...] Many intellectuals have averted their gaze from the evolutionary logic of violence, fearing that acknowledging it is tantamount to accepting [...] But denying the logic of violence makes it easy to forget how readily violence can flare up.” Recognizing these tendencies does not require accepting that insecurity is inevitable; instead, it makes institutions and deliberate efforts to prevent conflict important. Sterling-Folker (2002) explains how the two perspectives can work together: “Realism and constructivism need one another to correct their own worst excesses […] [C]ommon ontological ground is possible […] This enables us to reread realism as an explanation of the process of global institutional transformation itself, but […] realism must collaborate instead with an approach like constructivism, which is capable of addressing the evolution of particular social content.” Wyn Jones (1999) explains, “What of those problems that are a threat to survival? […] [T]hreats are securitized in order to mobilize and legitimate particular responses […] [T]he peace movement of the 1980s identified nuclearism as a threat […] and generated massive public support […] [W]hen the label ‘security’ is attached to particular issues, it generates validity-claims that are open to redemption or refutation through argumentation. […] [Q]uestions that might arise during the process of redeeming the validity-claims implicit in this scenario would include, Does the third country really pose a threat.” (pp. 109-111). Together, these arguments support an approach to debate that examines both the credibility of a particular threat and the assumptions that make it appear threatening via counterplans to stop others from seeing us as threats.

2. How do critics stop China or fundamentalists from securitizing? “Believers in the self-fulfilling prophecy have got the argument the wrong way around. […] [T]he real sources of the current tensions are Chinese actions, particularly Chinese threats.” (Rachman, 1996). Rejecting security rhetoric as root cause misapplies projecting mindsets, when these authors simply guide us for how to work within its flaws, not to wish away the realist mindset as if it is a valid opportunity cost to debating risk in order that worse ideologies do not creep in when accidents occur. Their self-fulfilling impact claims also securitize: “referring to the issue of illegal migration in terms of security (even critically!) re-enforces the social perception of the latter as a security issue. [...] [I]t can be difficult to untie the migrant from its strong negative connotations and, hence, trying to do so would only help sustaining the social image.” (Munster, 2004). Macy (1992) discredits the “self-fulfilling” argument: “‘to speak of catastrophe will just make it more likely to happen.’ Actually, the contrary is nearer to the truth. Psychoanalytic theory and personal experience show us that it is precisely what we repress that eludes our conscious control and tends to erupt into behavior.” The way teams apply it contradicts the critique, as they preclude the very case debate of risk assessment to improve the evaluation of security claims. Debating predictions is still valuable to persuade, and self-fulfilling prophecies are rare cases: “The critics thus commit the straw man fallacy by requiring a sort of prediction in IR (1) that few, if any, theorists claim to be able to offer, (2) that are not required by policy-makers for theory-based predictions to be valuable.” (Chernoff, 2009). This combined approach makes public debate and explicit risk assessment essential to preventive planning, as uncertainty is a reason to scrutinize assumptions, not to abandon analysis. Liotta (2005) explains why waiting for dangers to become immediate can undermine effective action: “Although it seems attractive to focus on exclusionary concepts that insist on desecuritization, privileged referent objects, and the ‘belief’ that threats and vulnerabilities are little more than social constructions (Grayson, 2003), all these concepts work in theory but fail in practice […] [T]he creation of a sense of urgency to act – even on some issues that may not have some impact for years or even decades to come – is perhaps the only appropriate first response. The real cost of not investing in the right way and early enough in the places where trends and effects are accelerating in the wrong direction is likely to be decades and decades of economic and political frustration – and, potentially, military engagement. […] [T]he international community, must increasingly focus on long-term creeping vulnerabilities in order to avoid crisis responses to conditions […] [R]ather than focusing on the security issues themselves, we should be focusing on the best multi-dimensional approaches to confronting and solving them. One approach, which might avoid the massive tidal impact of creeping vulnerabilities, is to sharply make a rudder shift from constant crisis intervention toward strategic planning.” The point is not that every forecast justifies urgent intervention, but that competing forecasts and responses should be compared before deteriorating conditions narrow the available options. Even if security lessens life's value, Szacki explains keeping people alive should be state policy which lets people decide their life's value.

3. Fitzsimmons (2006) explains why rejecting prediction altogether lets worse fears fill-in speculative policymaking: “[T]he burden of proof in any debates about planning should belong to the decision-maker who rejects formal analysis […] [P]rediction requires decisionmakers to expose, not only to others but to themselves, the beliefs they hold […] While the complexity of the international security environment may make it somewhat resistant to the type of probabilistic thinking associated with risk, a risk-oriented approach seems to be the only viable model for national-security strategic planning. […] [A]ssumptions must be made in the end. […] [H]istory suggests that unchecked scepticism regarding the validity of prediction […] empower parochial interests in decision-making […] [W]here analysis is silent or inadequate, the personal beliefs of decision-makers fill the void. […] ambiguity allows intuition or wishfulness to drive interpretation. […] A decision-maker with no faith in prediction is left with little more than a set of worst-case scenarios and […] existing beliefs.” “Threats have to be dealt with both in terms of perceptions and in terms of the phenomena which are perceived to be threatening. […] because situations with a credible claim to urgency will keep coming back and then we need […] procedures.” (Knudsen, 2001). “I would reject Wæver’s conclusion that we should seek to desecuritise social life, because I fear that such a decision would abandon the entire field of security to the military […] [W]e aim to securitise important issues – in order to lay claim to those resources and, perhaps as importantly, to question the claims that the military makes.” (Mutimer, 1999). “The language game of security is, in other words, a jus necessitatis for threatened elites, and this it must remain. Such an affirmative reading, not at all aimed at rejecting the concept, may be a more serious challenge to the established discourse than a critical one, for it recognizes that a conservative approach to security is an intrinsic element.” (Wæver, 1996). Kavka (1987) shows public fears force policymakers, as “nations are literally incapable of refraining from taking steps believed to be necessary for national defense, even if these impose horrible risks or harms on outside innocents. For any government, that failed to undertake the requisite defensive actions (e.g., any government that abandoned nuclear deterrence) would be quickly ousted and replaced.” Debating specific scenarios can therefore expose unsupported assumptions and challenge exaggerated threats instead of leaving those judgments to policymakers’ unexamined intuitions. Huysmans (2006) makes the key distinction, “not everyone speaking or writing security has an equal chance of producing a securitising effect. It is usually the case that presidents, police officers or generals speaking security or articulating a cultural predisposition towards enemy definition is more important than the language of shop assistants.” Our debates do not construct enemies to appeal to security of the nation, but foresight against scenarios for global extinction to mobilize support. Debating case should be the starting point to deescalate the threats perceived in policymaker’s minds.